Benchmarks mean nadda, niete, zilch, zero, bubbkiss, NOTHING. That doesn't mean you can't deduce the relative performance of a platform, it just means you have to do it by other means, and the best way to do it is with timed tests. On that score, when putting up the same or equivalent apps on a G5 and a similarly priced X86 workstation, the G5's seem to do quite well. Photoshop, compilers, audio, what have you, the performance is there for people in that market and price bracket.
The performance crown comes and goes, Apple's performance/dollar equation looks pretty good for a G5.
Price performance also looks not too bad for laptops. Mobile X86 is nowhere near as fast as desktop X86 and the G4 does much better (relatively speaking) they're a bit behind in performance, but the integration and reliability trump those concerns when dealing with often fragile and mysterious laptops. Apple needs to keep pushing prices down here, or add some big performance/battery improvements soon, but on the whole they're still in the game in the mobile space despite being saddled with G4's. In some key "mobile" factors, I'd even say Apple is ahead.
Now you've gone and done it, I defended the price/performance ratio of an Apple product, two products actually, and I feel dirty, so lets get to the real issue: PRICE!
Apple's consumer desktops cost WAYYYY TOO MUCH. Sorry, but an iMac for 1799 simply gets spanked by equivalent PC's. I'm talking 2499 in Canadian Pesos, the amount of x86 desktop performance/features you can buy for 2499 in Canadian Pesos dwarfs what you can get from Apple's AIO machines. Double the RAM (easily, even in machines 500USD less) Double the HDD space (ditto) to say nothing of the HTP4's that spank the desktop G4 silly. Machines of 1299-1499 range also sport 17" LCD's and superdrives in PC land -- at least the equal of the iMac. The iMac brings ergos and design to the party, the PC's bring more power and storage, the same I/O and better expansion in the form of AGP slots, CPU sockets, and room for more internal drives (at least 2 HDD's and 2 opticals) The lesser AIO's look even worse compared to equivalently priced PC's, especially the eMac and it's awful dinosaur CRT: For the money you can get combo equipped PC towers with a 17" LCD !!! That just looks bad on Apple, really bad, and you can blame desktop consumers for going with a familiar OS (windows) which works well enough for Office/internet/e-mail/gaming/MP3/digital photos, has more RAM, storage, and expansion; and has a far better display.
hey giant, it's a bit hard to reply to your standpoint, because there are other mitigating circumstances that may be at play here.
i can, however, cite my own experience; draw from it what you will.
at my last job, the mac os 9 machines, from 8600's to g4's, ran like crap. actually, that's an understatement. it was so bad that i started challenging my IT department to work with me to fix 'em. grudgingly, we started digging.
first, my IT department was woefully undertrained. not just about macs, but about simple basic crap like defragging the server drives. or keeping a certain minimum amount of space available. so that was one problem. the pc's seemed faster because all they did was access email and open the occasional word document or spreadsheet, whereas the macs would grind, chug and crash under 10, 20 or 40 meg files.
also, out servers were running nt4 and windows services for mac for a VERY long time. once we got away from that (just before i left) to windows 2000 server, things picked up dramatically. it also helped when they stopped using bootleg and hacked versions of commercial programs. yeah, they were that bad.
also, mac users can, at times, be very possessive yet lazy about their computing habits. can't tell you how many people had YEARS of email on their computer taking up space, or how full their hard drives were. they would just stare blankly at me and ask why that was a problem. they just threw the norton utilities cd in the drive whenever something bad would happen. it took a LONG time to get them to stop that habit.
also, something people don't realize is that unless you have STRICT control of your fonts, you are asking for crashes and slowdowns, especially under os 9. you just cannot grab copies of fonts from friends or clients and trust they will not crap on your system. when we invested in clean copies of our fonts, and actually made a concerted effort to clean up the systems, almost all of our problems vanished. god's honest truth.
so there may be a lot of things causing the discrepancy you are seeing. i can say that when we were having those problems at work, i was running the SAME stuff at home, and didn't have any of the same problems, because i had a good systems department supporting my computer...
I've been using a Mac since I graduated from my C-64 and for the last 15 years in my professional (graphics oriented) career, I also use Macs at home. It amazes me the problems that people at work have with their Macs while I average maybe 1 or 2 a month across my family's 4 Macs at home.
It all comes down to maintaining your equipment. Be it Mac or PC. Some people know how to take care of their computers, some (most) don't. Keep your machine nice, clean, and tight... chances are you'll have a good overall computing experience... download countless untested freeware programs, and never clean up your system... you're asking for constant problems.
The performance crown comes and goes, Apple's performance/dollar equation looks pretty good for a G5.<snip>
Maybe, maybe not, but I have say that G5 has the best perf/$ ratio not seen since G3. What does this mean then? That means G4 sucked. I mean, it truly stank. I was laughing at all the people (6 months ago) espousing G4 and the "megahertz myth" when x86 was already in multiples of gigahertz and the fact that even the the most efficient processor cannot make up for tripling of the clock and bus speed. In any case, now that G5 is out, G4 defenders are finally quieting down.
OK, I feel better now too. Who's the hypothetical troll again?
I didn't actually expect anyone to post, but no prob.
Yeah, it was troll bait. But find me a troll who can tell me what makes the x86 better than the PPC and I'll find you a dollar. (or something like that). Partly a curiosity.
Comments
Benchmarks mean nadda, niete, zilch, zero, bubbkiss, NOTHING. That doesn't mean you can't deduce the relative performance of a platform, it just means you have to do it by other means, and the best way to do it is with timed tests. On that score, when putting up the same or equivalent apps on a G5 and a similarly priced X86 workstation, the G5's seem to do quite well. Photoshop, compilers, audio, what have you, the performance is there for people in that market and price bracket.
The performance crown comes and goes, Apple's performance/dollar equation looks pretty good for a G5.
Price performance also looks not too bad for laptops. Mobile X86 is nowhere near as fast as desktop X86 and the G4 does much better (relatively speaking) they're a bit behind in performance, but the integration and reliability trump those concerns when dealing with often fragile and mysterious laptops. Apple needs to keep pushing prices down here, or add some big performance/battery improvements soon, but on the whole they're still in the game in the mobile space despite being saddled with G4's. In some key "mobile" factors, I'd even say Apple is ahead.
Now you've gone and done it, I defended the price/performance ratio of an Apple product, two products actually, and I feel dirty, so lets get to the real issue: PRICE!
Apple's consumer desktops cost WAYYYY TOO MUCH. Sorry, but an iMac for 1799 simply gets spanked by equivalent PC's. I'm talking 2499 in Canadian Pesos, the amount of x86 desktop performance/features you can buy for 2499 in Canadian Pesos dwarfs what you can get from Apple's AIO machines. Double the RAM (easily, even in machines 500USD less) Double the HDD space (ditto) to say nothing of the HTP4's that spank the desktop G4 silly. Machines of 1299-1499 range also sport 17" LCD's and superdrives in PC land -- at least the equal of the iMac. The iMac brings ergos and design to the party, the PC's bring more power and storage, the same I/O and better expansion in the form of AGP slots, CPU sockets, and room for more internal drives (at least 2 HDD's and 2 opticals) The lesser AIO's look even worse compared to equivalently priced PC's, especially the eMac and it's awful dinosaur CRT: For the money you can get combo equipped PC towers with a 17" LCD !!! That just looks bad on Apple, really bad, and you can blame desktop consumers for going with a familiar OS (windows) which works well enough for Office/internet/e-mail/gaming/MP3/digital photos, has more RAM, storage, and expansion; and has a far better display.
There I feel better now.
i can, however, cite my own experience; draw from it what you will.
at my last job, the mac os 9 machines, from 8600's to g4's, ran like crap. actually, that's an understatement. it was so bad that i started challenging my IT department to work with me to fix 'em. grudgingly, we started digging.
first, my IT department was woefully undertrained. not just about macs, but about simple basic crap like defragging the server drives. or keeping a certain minimum amount of space available. so that was one problem. the pc's seemed faster because all they did was access email and open the occasional word document or spreadsheet, whereas the macs would grind, chug and crash under 10, 20 or 40 meg files.
also, out servers were running nt4 and windows services for mac for a VERY long time. once we got away from that (just before i left) to windows 2000 server, things picked up dramatically. it also helped when they stopped using bootleg and hacked versions of commercial programs. yeah, they were that bad.
also, mac users can, at times, be very possessive yet lazy about their computing habits. can't tell you how many people had YEARS of email on their computer taking up space, or how full their hard drives were. they would just stare blankly at me and ask why that was a problem. they just threw the norton utilities cd in the drive whenever something bad would happen. it took a LONG time to get them to stop that habit.
also, something people don't realize is that unless you have STRICT control of your fonts, you are asking for crashes and slowdowns, especially under os 9. you just cannot grab copies of fonts from friends or clients and trust they will not crap on your system. when we invested in clean copies of our fonts, and actually made a concerted effort to clean up the systems, almost all of our problems vanished. god's honest truth.
so there may be a lot of things causing the discrepancy you are seeing. i can say that when we were having those problems at work, i was running the SAME stuff at home, and didn't have any of the same problems, because i had a good systems department supporting my computer...
ME
Originally posted by Outsider
slashdot deja-vu?
I've been using a Mac since I graduated from my C-64 and for the last 15 years in my professional (graphics oriented) career, I also use Macs at home. It amazes me the problems that people at work have with their Macs while I average maybe 1 or 2 a month across my family's 4 Macs at home.
It all comes down to maintaining your equipment. Be it Mac or PC. Some people know how to take care of their computers, some (most) don't. Keep your machine nice, clean, and tight... chances are you'll have a good overall computing experience... download countless untested freeware programs, and never clean up your system... you're asking for constant problems.
Just .02¢ worth from a newbie
Originally posted by Outsider
slashdot deja-vu?
? I read /. every day and there are definitely more OS X fans on there than on a regular PC site.
Originally posted by Matsu
<snip>
The performance crown comes and goes, Apple's performance/dollar equation looks pretty good for a G5.<snip>
Maybe, maybe not, but I have say that G5 has the best perf/$ ratio not seen since G3. What does this mean then? That means G4 sucked. I mean, it truly stank. I was laughing at all the people (6 months ago) espousing G4 and the "megahertz myth" when x86 was already in multiples of gigahertz and the fact that even the the most efficient processor cannot make up for tripling of the clock and bus speed. In any case, now that G5 is out, G4 defenders are finally quieting down.
OK, I feel better now too. Who's the hypothetical troll again?
I am still in love with my baby 68K..LC-475. Am surfing net with her as we speak..
Ok not super fast ( 25 Mghtz processor)..but who gives a fig..What she lacks in grunt she makes up for with sheer elegance & style.
Like sailing a yatch with the wind at your back instead of a powerboat pounding through waves..
I've lost count how many times I've accidently " crashed " my girl..triping over plug etc..
Yet she keeps coming up all smiles...and has never "frozen "
" Keep on Rockin Baby "
8)
=======================
Typical 18 years old PC boy:
1) Windows rules
2) NO one uses Mac
3) Mac is only a toy for gays
4) P4 is the fastest CPU, period
5) Bill Gates is GOD
6) Steve Jobs is a monkey
7) I LOVE YOU, MELISSA!
8 ) We love fixing problem
9) 300+fps in Q3, UT2 is still NOT fast enough
10) Homework? What is it?
11) My penis is bigger than yours
=========================
Is that enough?
Originally posted by Leonis
5) Bill Gates is GOD
6) Steve Jobs is a monkey
There's people here though who worship Steve Jobs (or just plain "Steve" as they like to consider him a friend) which is equally absurd.
People go way over the top on both sides.
Originally posted by Aquafire
I am still in love with my baby 68K..LC-475. Am surfing net with her as we speak..
So what do you do with the iMac then?
Originally posted by Ernest eMac
There's people here though who worship Steve Jobs (or just plain "Steve" as they like to consider him a friend) which is equally absurd.
People go way over the top on both sides.
Agree....
PC Zealots praise Bill as God
while
Mac Zealots prasie Steves as God
Fortunately I am standing in the middle
Originally posted by LoCash
I don't think even PC zealots praise Mr. Gates as a God...
giant and I are going to start a Bill Gates Fan Club.
Originally posted by bunge
giant and I are going to start a Bill Gates Fan Club.
He also changes his clothes once in a while.
Even though apple's slow processors keep the market share @ .001%, steve jobs should still at least be able to get a change of clothes from tjmaxx.
BTW: longhorn kicks OS EXs ass. Just wait until 2014 when I get it on my 3 Ghz P4 I just built for $53.56
You think apple has great design? Beat these:
Now that's good design
Yeah, it was troll bait. But find me a troll who can tell me what makes the x86 better than the PPC and I'll find you a dollar. (or something like that). Partly a curiosity.